1. ADOPT Bylaws
2. ELECT Officers

Interested in getting involved?  …volunteers are needed!   …this is a real tenants council which will address real issues and get real results!  Residents are needed for many vital functions, including:

• drafting bylaws 
• running for officer – President, Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer
• serving on board of directors
• running / serving on committees
• running / serving on tenant documentation team
• MORE!

…just email:   onehundredstatestreet@yahoo.com

Currently, there  is no tenants council. 

HOWEVER, there is a State Street Tenant Activities Committee … CLICK here for its bylaws…

HUD policy & regulations recognize the importance of tenants right to organize free of undue influence and abuse by management.

Per HUD regulations, neither management nor owners may interfere with tenant organizing.

HUD will punish management and owners by making them ineligible to receive HUD subsidies.

Some companies learn the hard way that they can lose the major element of their business model by treating tenants badly, destroying morale, and denying basic rights and human dignity.

In this case, the Management is Hall-Keen Management and the ownership is the Portland Housing Authority.  Both of these entities full-well know better.  However, in large organizations, Site Managers often are able to keep tenants down and make everything real pretty on paper for their higher-ups in Regional Management, at company headquarters, and ownership.

Tenant Organizers do not need permission to organize tenants. 

Tenant Organizers must be given access to  the building to organize tenants.

Tenants may, of course, place themselves on a Do Not Contact list if they are uninterested in participating.

However, the silent majority of tenants have the right to receive information about opportunities to organize together to protect their rights and their safety.

Often, tenants will be hesitant about putting themselves out there for fear of becoming targets for management, owners, and the other residents who seek to gain the favor of management & owners by cracking down on tenants who attempt to organize.

It’s a classic story across the city, across the country, and, tragically, across history.

The good news is that we are all Americans!  And as Americans:

• we have Constitutionally guaranteed rights!
• we have human rights!
• we have rights to Fair Housing!
• we have the right to organize with each other!

Now, the more flamboyant and melodramatic among the tenants might straighten their tri-corner hat and produce from their vestment a piece of parchment and cite a quote from the US Declaration of Independence:

…But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. …

http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm

“NEIGHBOR by NEIGHBOR: Mobilizing an Invisible Community in Lewiston, Maine”   

 Monday, MARCH 8 @ 1:30pm

Tenants’ Meeting Room

100 State Street TENANTS NETWORK

RIGHTS of, by & for the TENANTS!

OneHundredStateStreet@yahoo.com

OneHundredStateStreet.wordpress.com

*** MEETING NOTICE ***

OFFICIAL TENANTS COUNCIL

ORGANIZING MEETING

Monday, APRIL 12 @ 1:30pm

 * ADOPT Bylaws

* ELECT Officers

Portland Housing Authority &

Maine State Housing Authority

Monday, FEBRUARY 15 @ 2pm

Tenants’ Meeting Room

100 State Street

Come meet your

resident repesentative

on the

Portland Housing Authority

Board of Commissioners!

Let her know what’s on your mind! 

She wants to know!

presented by:

100 State Street TENANTS NETWORK

RIGHTS of, by & for the TENANTS!

OneHundredStateStreet@yahoo.com

RIGHTS of the tenants, by the tenants, and for the tenants!

This group is for any tenants who live at 100 State Street

 
· 100 State Street is owned by Portland Housing Authority is one of Maine’s largest housing developers and management companies.  Their website’s staff directory lists 41 employees.  They own over 1,000 units representing over 2,000 tenants in Portland, Maine.  They administer 1,754 Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers representing over 3,500 people.  They own, manage, or administer several hundred more units representing approximately 1,000 more people.   FMI:  www.PortHouse.org

· 100 State Street is held by Portland Housing Authority in a non-profit corporation called State Street Housing Preservation Corporation.

· 100 State Street has a HUD-subsidized mortgage under the project-based section 8 program.

· 100 State Street is managed by Hall-Keen Management, Inc.      FMI: www.HallKeen.com

FROM HALL-KEEN’S WEBSITE:

HallKeen’s current portfolio includes more than 5,000 units of multi family residential housing in sixty-one separate partnerships, 258 units of assisted living residences in four partnerships, and approximately 1.5 million square feet of commercial space, inclusive of light industrial, office and biotech laboratory space. HallKeen has a strong presence throughout New England, North Carolina and Virginia. While retaining prime focus on affordable housing, HallKeen manages a diverse portfolio of residential housing, commercial properties and assisted living communities.

HallKeen is staffed by a group of dedicated, experienced, and highly motivated individuals. There are 36 employees working at the central office in Norwood, and more than 350 employees working at the various sites. Andrew P. Burnes, President, guides and runs the day-to-day affairs of the company.

· Tenants everywhere have rights via the US Constitution, laws (state & federal), municipal ordinances and housing codes, federal rules & regs (HUD, EPA, etc.), state rules & regs (Maine Housing, Maine DEP, Maine State Bureau of Pesticides Control, etc.)

· Sometimes, as tenants, we forget we even have rights … unused rights are weakened

· Often, large bureaucracies find tenants rights annoying, cumbersome, and expensive – so, they seem to conveniently (for them) forget that tenants have rights.

· Tenants can help each other to remember to exercise their rights!

· Tenants can help bureaucracies – both large & small – to remember that tenants have rights which must be observed (this is not optional).

· So, join us & let’s explore & exercise our rights together!  Together, we can facilitate communication between tenants and any bureaucracy – large or small!

 
RESOURCES:

Portland Tenants Union    www.PortlandTenants.org

National Alliance of HUD Tenants (NAHT)    www.SaveOurHomes.org

Maine Housing Network    www.MaineHousing.us

Housing NOW!    www.HousingNOW.net

YOU CAN connect with your fellow tenants…

by email:    OneHundredStateStreet@yahoo.com 

by web:      www.OneHundredStateStreet.wordpress.com